Linking of Scores, Funding Said 'Shoddy Reasoning'

Washington--The Reagan Administration's practice of linking
increased federal spending for education during the 1960's and 1970's
with a decline in student performance on college-entrance tests during
the same period represents "shoddy reasoning at best, and might even
qualify as voodoo reasoning," a high-ranking official of the College
Board told a House education subcommittee last week.

Daniel B. Taylor, a senior vice president of the organization that
sponsors the Scholastic Aptitude Test, added that the group was
"dismayed" by Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell's recent decision
to publish state-by-state average scores on the test in a widely
distributed chart outlining the relative educational status of the
states. (See Education Week, Jan. 11, 1984.)

"I would suggest that Secretary Bell send over to the White House
the concluding sentence from his news release of January 5, which read
as follows: 'This means that all should refrain from jumping at
con-clusions that often result from trying to draw simplistic
generalizations from complex circumstances,"' Mr. Taylor told members
of the House Subcommittee on Elementary, Secondary, and Vocational
Education.

Scope Broadened

The subcommittee's chairman, Representative Carl D. Perkins,
Democrat of Kentucky, had originally called the hearing to examine the
propriety of Mr. Bell's use of test-score averages to measure the
status of education in the states.

The scope of the hearing was broadened, staff members said, to
examine President Reagan's observation in his State of the Union
address that "a 600-percent increase in federal spending on education
between 1960 and 1980 was accompanied by a steady decline in sat
scores."

"This Administration is repeatedly inferring that there is no
correlation between education spending and education achievement, and
using that as a justification for their dismal budget requests for
educa-tion," Representative Perkins said. "We need to look at the
Secretary's numbers more carefully to see if that is the case."

Mr. Bell was unable to appear before the panel because he was
involved in the press conference that preceded the official release of
the President's fiscal 1985 budget request to the Congress. The
Administration is proposing a $15.48-billion appropriation for the
Education Department--about $100 million more than the appropriation
for the current fiscal year. (See related story on page 1.)

Mr. Taylor told the panel that an examination of test-score averages
over a number of years can be "suggestive" of changes in the academic
performance of college-bound students only; as used by the
Administration, he said, "[the] scores are by no means definitive."

"You can imagine our dismay when we find that data we have produced
for legitimate educational purposes are being cited by the executive
branch as evidence for conclusions about American education that are
faulty and misleading," he said. Archie E. Lapointe, executive director
of the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress,
added that few of the federal dollars spent on education during the
past two decades were meant to help groups of students who typically
take the sat

"On the other hand, we know that several federal projects during
that period were specifically targeted to help minority and
disadvantaged students improve their basic skills," Mr. Lapointe
continued.

'Abandoned or Ignored'

Data collected by the naep from 1970 to 1982 indicate that student
performance in curriculum areas targeted for federal aid, such as
mathematics and reading, improved during that period, while performance
in curriculum areas "abandoned or ignored by federal efforts" declined
or remained stable, he said.

"While this litany sounds convincing, I must remind myself and the
[subcommittee] that the data are not overpowering," Mr. Lapointe told
the panel. "It is fair to observe, on the other hand, a regular and
persistent consistency that suggests a bit more than coincidence."

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